Zeenews Bureau
Mumbai: David Coleman Headley, the suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba operative arrested in the US by the FBI for plotting terror attacks to be carried out in India and Denmark, had stayed at an apartment in Breach Candy area while living in Mumbai.
According to reports, Headley had stayed on the fifth floor of A Block of Shyam Niwas housing society in south Mumbai’s Breach Candy area.
The apartment – Number 56, where Headley stayed as a paying guest along with an elderly Sindhi couple for almost a year beginning April 2008 – is located near the US Consulate.
The revelation comes amidst the investigating agencies’ efforts to retrace the steps of Headley and his associate Tahawwur Rana across India.
The Sindhi couple described Headley as “sweet and charming”.
Speaking to a leading daily, 75-year-old Mrs Kriplani said, “David Headley was a very sweet and charming man... He was extremely courteous, and never created any trouble for us.”
“My husband (who passed away recently) always used to tell me how nice and helpful he was. He seemed like a most sincere and well-meaning person. I am really shocked by what I came to know about him from the newspapers,” she added.
According to Mrs Kriplani, Headley used to stay in the apartment for nearly a week and then he used to go travelling on work for two to three months.
Headley had told the elderly couple that he was running an immigration agency in the city.
Headley linked to blasts?
Meanwhile, sources said that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is investigating Headley’s possible role in the blasts preceding the Mumbai terror attacks last November.
NIA officials, sources said, believe it would be too early to rule out his involvement in the Delhi, Ahmedabad and Bangalore serial blasts.
The NIA is likely to study in detail the blasts between 2005 and 2008 and match them with the movement of Headley and Rana across the country.
First Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 12:11